It's understandable if you forgot to send a December birthday card to that friend. The holidays tend to overshadow everything else. Jane Austen had a December birthday. This past Dec. 16 was the 250th anniversary of the British novelist’s birth.
To honor her day and celebrate the birth of something new, a group of Austen readers, or Austinites, if you will, gathered at the Fayetteville Tea House for a cuppa, some biscuits and good conversation. Ozarks at Large’s Jack Travis visited the tea house last month and brings us this report.
Enjoying a warm beverage and a tea shop on a cold December afternoon seems like a fitting way to honor your favorite British novelist, no? Laura Goodwin certainly thinks so.
"We're here in reverence. We're here in excitement. We're here in just the joy of knowing that we got to celebrate Jane's 250th birthday. I won't be around for 300, I'm certain, you know. But I got to do 250. So that's excellent."
Goodwin, along with a few other Austinites, shared some time on Dec. 16 thinking and speaking about Jane Austen. They also spent time drinking tea, one of Austen's daily rituals along with most of her homeland.
"So it was a regular part of British life, and in fact, Jane was in charge of the tea in her household. It was under lock and key, and she was in charge of making breakfast and serving tea in the morning. Her sister and Martha Lloyd, who was a childhood friend that lived with them and her mother. Jane's mother, not Martha's. Um, they basically took on all the responsibility for the household so that Jane had time to write."
And write she did. She published four novels in her life and two more posthumously. Within those texts, like Pride and Prejudice and Emma, there are stories to be enjoyed for hundreds of years.
To help facilitate that enjoyment, Austinites all over the country have come together to form the Jane Austen Society of North America, or JASNA. Good news for Ozarker Austinites: Goodwin has recently founded the Ozark Foothills JASNA chapter.
"Yes, my friend Ginny Swain and I decided to begin the Ozark Foothills region of JASNA, which is the Jane Austen Society of North America. And that society has been around since the seventies. And as far as I know, we've never had a region up here in this neck of the woods. There is a region that serves the southeastern part of Arkansas, but there's nothing in Tulsa. The closest to us would be in Kansas City.
"So we thought, okay, well, we can do this in Fayetteville and encompass all of the foothills so that folks from eastern Oklahoma and from southern Missouri, and even the southeast corner of Kansas can come and explore with us because really, we are crazy about Jane Austen. We're crazy about her work.
“Her reputation on the street can be a little prissy, and she was not. You know, she was kind of radical for her time. And I would call her a proto-feminist or even just a feminist. And I love that part of her writing. I love that she's concerned with the station of women at that time. And there's just so much to learn and understand about her life and about that period in history."
Goodwin says they’re still deciding on programming but are thrilled with the potential.
"I mean, we have ideas about what sounds fun to us, but we really want to reflect what our region is interested in. So for some people, they'll be interested in just the romance of it. Or maybe they're interested in the films. Some will want to read books as a community and discuss that. Some will only be interested in Regency clothing, and they want to create costumes and have, you know, opportunities to wear them out.
"Some people will be interested in tea time. We just don't know. We don't know where we're going to focus. You know, Jane Austen was a great walker, and so some may want to hike together. So there's all different ways that the regions—there's over 80 regions in the Jane Austen Society—and each of them has their own kind of flavor and their own kind of events."
That variety of interests among Austinites was well represented at the birthday tea gathering. For example, Selene Simpson had a unique way to engage with the literature.
"I'm working on a puzzle, and I just found I just like to do puzzles and then a little store in Rogers, and it's Jane Austen. And on the back you have the story of each book and you have 60 other characters in the puzzle. It's really pretty.”
“And so it's like a jigsaw puzzle?”
“I'm going to show you. I'll show you.”
“It's so picturesque. And it's got all the characters together, which is, it's a fun thing to see all their stories. All their stories. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And I actually know a puzzle enthusiast. And so now I have an idea for a good Christmas present.
“It's the right time of year to learn about that."
"Yes, exactly."
If you're a lover of Jane Austen novels, a literary-minded individual interested in her time period, or just someone who loves learning, Goodwin says you should consider joining the new JASNA chapter.
"And so at JASNA.org you can go and join. And once you join, you select which region you want to belong to. And they allow you to actually choose a primary region and then two other regions. So that's really fun because then you get to know what other regions are doing. If you're traveling or if you have a second home, you could join that region.
"And we just invite people that are interested to join JASNA, and then we can keep you abreast of the activities that we develop and how we gather to celebrate our enthusiasm for Jane and her work."
She also suggests just reading Jane Austen in general, no matter who you are. She recommends starting with Emma or Persuasion.
"One is Emma because it's just so well crafted. The plotting. Jane probably was like her two innovations is that she really developed tight plotting in a time where a novel might have this strange little—I don't even know what to call it—but sort of go off on a tangent. And so she really developed the tight plotting.
"And then also the dialogue that she used was quite innovative for that time period. So I love it for that. And then I love Persuasion because her heroine is more mature. She's 27, right on the threshold of spinsterhood. And it's just a very poignant, you know, story of a woman who has had bad luck in love. And as a mature person, find it again. So it's a lovely story."
You can visit JASNA.org for more information on the Jane Austen Society and how to become a member. Then you can check out the JASNA Ozark Foothills Region Facebook page to learn more about Austen-inspired events in the region, and send questions to Laura Goodwin and Ginny Swain at jasna.ozarkfoothills@gmail.com.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
